A relaxed charmer with a hundred true jazz stories to tell, tenorist-composer Benny Golson is in remarkably good shape at 80 and playing beautifully. The angry fires of youth are smouldering embers now but he still has good speed and the intimate, breathy tone that has always linked his post-bop style to earlier masters such as Coleman Hawkins and the epoch-straddling Lucky Thompson.

It doesn’t hurt, either, that audiences are more indulgent today. Many would have lost patience with Benny’s lengthy inter-number reminiscences a decade ago but now that jazz is studied to degree level, listeners are genuinely interested in how he came to write eight of jazz’s most beautiful originals.

Last night we learnt that Along Came Betty was inspired by a girl Benny encountered on a one-night stand in Dayton, Ohio, with Bullmoose Jackson and his Buffalo Bearcats. And how he wrote I Remember Clifford (recorded by 334 artists) after pianist Walter Davis tearfully broke the news of trumpeter Clifford Brown’s death in a car smash.

Pianist James Pearson, bassist Simon Woolf and drummer Chris Dagley are backing Benny this week and it’s clear how much these London stars relish sharing these great numbers with their composer.
Until tomorrow (020 7439 0747).